July 2
- Fast of TammuzJewish
The Fast of the 17th of Tammuz, recalling the breaching of Jerusalem’s walls and opening the “three weeks” of mourning.
- 2016 CEJewish · died
Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor, author of Night, and Nobel Peace laureate who devoted his life to memory and human rights, died in New York.
- 1505 CEChristian
Caught in a thunderstorm near Stotternheim, the law student Martin Luther vowed to become a monk, a turn that reshaped his life's course.
- 1893 CEMesopotamian · born
Cyril John Gadd, the British Assyriologist and Sumerologist who later kept the British Museum's cuneiform collections, was born in Bath.
- 1900 CEIslamic · born
Muhammad Asad, born Leopold Weiss in Lemberg (Lviv), became a traveler, writer and translator whose English rendering and commentary on the Qur'an reached readers worldwide.
- 1862 CEScience · born
William Henry Bragg, who with his son Lawrence founded X-ray crystallography, the technique later used to map molecular structures, was born on 2 July 1862 in Cumberland, England.